Note for Preparing Better Purees for Babies

The first purees that the baby eats should be light and fed with a bottle, later on they can become thicker and spoon-fed to the baby.

The ingredients should be placed in cold water so that the food has a better flavor.

If you want to prepare a vegetable puree with the stock, it is not advisable to blend celery or parsnip because these have a very strong flavor.

Before feeding soups or purees to babies it is recommended to add in a teaspoon of olive oil to the food.

It is not advisable to add salt into the baby’s food until the baby is over nine months of age.

You should calculate that each serving size should be of around 175 to 200 cc’s of soup and around 125 to 150 cc’s of puree.

To thicken the first soups you can use: powder milk, rice flour or cereals dissolved in water or stock, making sure that they acquire the same texture as the one the baby is used to drinking from the milk bottle.

It is very important to strain the baby soup in a fine strainer so that none of the cooking residue goes through.

The soups can become a bit thicker once the baby is over six months of age, besides those that are made with rice flour, cereals, cornstarch or tapioca.

If you intend to feed soup to the baby at four months of age, you should thicken it with the milk that the baby normally drinks.

If you need to add water to a soup while it is still cooking, make sure to add hot water to it so that it does not interrupt the cooking process.

When making boiled vegetables puree you can add in chicken or meat stock.

If the vegetable puree is light, you can thicken it a bit with rice flour, cornstarch or tapioca.

If the puree is too thick you can add in some stock to lighten it a bit.

As a child goes getting older the purees of cauliflower, pumpkin, spinach, carrots, mushrooms, lentils, garbanzos, peas etc can be made thicker by adding less liquid to them.

Another way of making purees is by sprinkling around 10 grams of cheese on top of the served portion once the child is over twelve months of age.

Remember that when preparing a child’s first puree, that it is very important to mash the food very well since a baby can easily choke. Just to be safe, once the food has been mashed you can strain it as well.